Touchscreen MacBook Pro debuts at $2,899

Apple unveiled its first touchscreen MacBook Pro on Wednesday during a Los Angeles event, a product the company had avoided for over a decade. CEO John Ternus presented the laptop, which supports gestures like scrolling, swiping, and pinching on its new display.

The screen, labeled as a PROLED XDR panel, uses tandem OLED technology. It reaches 2,000 nits of peak SDR brightness and runs at a 120Hz refresh rate. Apple states the contrast ratio is 10,000,000:1. The touch sensor is embedded directly into the display panel rather than sitting on top, a design choice intended to lower input latency. The device replaces the traditional notch with a hole punch for the webcam and adds a Dynamic Island for Live Activities.

The touch-equipped models are lighter than their non-touch siblings. The 14-inch version weighs as little as 3 pounds, down from 3.4 pounds for the new M6 MacBook Pro. The 16-inch touch model weighs 4 pounds, while the 16-inch M5 Pro model without touch weighs 4.7 pounds. The glowing Apple logo on the lid has also returned.

Prices start at $2,899 for the 14-inch model and $3,399 for the 16-inch model. The laptops run on M5 Pro or M5 Max chips, not the M6 chip used in other MacBook Pro models announced this week. Preorders opened immediately, with a release date set for November 6th.

The release reverses a long-standing design philosophy. Steve Jobs once dismissed touchscreen laptops as ergonomically terrible, and Apple resisted building one for more than ten years. Apple has adjusted macOS to be more touch-friendly, though the physical act of touching a laptop screen remains a departure from its usual interface.

This launch capped a three-day product rollout. On Monday, Apple introduced a thinner iPad Mini with an OLED display. On Tuesday, it refreshed the iMac and entry-level MacBook Pro with M6 chips. The M6 is Apple’s first 2nm chip, featuring a dual 16-core Neural Engine. Apple claims the M6 iMac offers up to five times faster on-device AI performance than the M4 model.

The iMac starts at $1,499 and arrives two years after the M4 update, meaning the M5 generation was skipped for that machine. The week of launches continues a series of releases since Ternus became CEO on September 1st. Recent products include the iPhone 18 Pro, AirPods 5, and the HomePod Mini 2. These follow the debut of the HomeView smart display and the iPhone Duo, Apple’s first foldable, announced about a month ago.